Take Off Your Shoes!

This is an excerpt from my book, Our Toxic World: A Survivor’s Guide

Do you take your shoes off at the door? It’s not an Eastern or hippie-dippy thing to do. It makes good, common sense.

Just think about where your feet are during the day:

You’ve walked on city sidewalks that have been salted and sprayed and perhaps slathered with dog poop.

You’ve crossed city streets that are saturated in hydrocarbons from cars and trucks, droplets of oil and other bodily fluids of petro-fueled vehicles and who knows what else.

You’ve probably shuffled across synthetic office carpets saturated with petrochemicals and perhaps even bearing the detritus of toxic chemicals used in the manufacture of pressed board furniture, including formaldehyde.

After a long day you, thankfully, return home. Perhaps you took a little walk around your yard, admiring the newly planted petunias and pulling a stray weed along the way. Did you know that most yards are saturated with toxic chemicals, not the least of which is the endocrine disruptor RoundUp? You don’t use RoundUp,you say? Does your neighbor? You don’t know and you can’t control your neighbor’s activities anyway.

Maybe youre really lucky like I am, and you can walk through your neighboring properties or a local park, enjoying the woods and the joys of nature. What toxic chemicals have been used there? Our neighbors are very vigilant about keeping toxic chemicals off our mountains, well all except one, anyway, who raises cattle and uses a wide variety of toxic agri-chemicals that inevitably run down onto everyone’s property. What’s more, the power company came in and ransacked hundreds of trees they thought would threaten power lines, sealing the deal by spraying industrial strength RoundUp on everything to prevent re-growth.

Here’s my point: Despite our best efforts, we all walk on toxic chemicals every single day. Why bring them into your house where they are re-circulated through heating and cooling systems?

It’s easy to put a shelf just inside your front door and convince family, friends and visitors to stash their shoes. If you want to be especially kind, you can even provide slippers or flip-flops for those who prefer not to go barefoot. It’ll go a long way toward reducing your toxic exposure.

2 thoughts on “Take Off Your Shoes!”

  1. Some of my friends allow shoes in their house and some do not, it is probably a 50/50 split. However, I never wear shoes in my own home simply because I’m more comfortable without them. But the most strange case were some months ago when I visited one of my best friends who own an awesome gadget bought in Italy here you can watch it. The fantastic gadget make you take your shoes on BUT at same time protect the floor from anything which is under your shoes.. http://mobilityclean.com/prodotto/sottoscarpe-monouso/

  2. Let’s remember who knows what germs we track in from the public restrooms we’ve visited during the day. I think I’d trust dog poop sooner than most public restrooms! We haven’t worn street shoes in our home in years. It just seems positively gross to me.

Comments are closed.